now it used to be that there was only one game in town for blizzard licensed
gaming peripherals but I've already unboxed one of razer's Blizzard licensed
peripherals and here is another one this is the Razer Marauder this is a
Starcraft 2 gaming keyboard and we're going to be having a quick look at it
today first let's see what Razer has to say for themselves on the box here so
first of all 1,000 HZ Ultra pulling so that means that the responsiveness of
this keyboard should be about as good as it gets APM lighting system so we'll have
to get into what exactly that is a little bit later on the Fly macro
recording this is a feature that I love seeing on keyboards because it makes
recording macros a little bit less tedious if you don't have to bring up a
big gold software program in order to do it laser edged Keys ooh cool very nice
and a braided fiber cable which we're pretty used to seeing on any quality
razor product here we go fully backlit Keys interesting 7t lightweight non
tangle cord okay we've covered that APM lighting system we've covered this too
optimize key travel and spacing this is a little bit different so what Razer is
basically saying is that the key travel which is the distance between being not
depressed and being depressed not to say sad but rather pressed down is optimized
for presumably RTS gaming integrated
number pad okay that is a keyboard
feature I suppose on the Fly macro recording APM lighting system and
elevated keys with optimized travel distance and spacing so it's a little bit redundant I guess what they mean to
say is it is a keyboard okay actions per minute
lighting oh actions per minute lighting system that's you know I figured that
might be what they mean by APM but I uh I wasn't really sure how you could have
a lighting system that's actions per minute so we're going to have to find
out exactly what that
means so it looks like they're actually
um isn't a seal on that side I'm not
sure how to get this box open ah here we go so there's a seal on this side so it
looks like you can actually only open this box one way so I'm going to take
points off of The Marauder keyboard because as an unboxer I like to have the
freedom to choose how I'm going to unbox my product no I'm just kidding I'm not
going to take any marks off the product because uh because the Box can only be
open from one side that actually doesn't bother me very much all right so here's
the marauder keyboard so the Box actually makes it look like if you see
here it's uh more of a black keyboard but you can see quite clearly
that it's more of a silver keyboard so if you were expecting a black keyboard
then uh you better sort of adjust your expectations because this is the color
scheme that we actually have going on here so this says armored
assault and uh apparently armored assault means lifting up a
tab and pulling out the lining of the
Box okay here we go with the included bits I mean Razor's great at
presentation so let's see what they have to say for themselves first we have the
quick start guide which shows us that it is a good idea to plug it into a USB
port and furthermore that it is a good idea to register your product so not a
whole lot going on in there next we have some razor stickers as I recall these
are UV sensitive only one way to find out for sure though guys come on let's
go find out if they're UV sensitive
so I'm in my computer room now hold on a second just going to turn off the
light and oh they are not UV sensitive bummer
okay never mind then I think they I think it's possible they used to be but
at any rate these ones are not so there that goes off with the quick start guide
next we have the main manual which is in
French Master guide there we go okay so programming macro
using your Marauder the only reason I have this open right now is to find out
what APM lighting is so you can customize the look of the marauder by
adjusting from over 16 million colors so
you can adjust the main the side strips and the underglow lighting colors click
any of the three color boxes so you can choose the color to assign to that lighting area Okay APM and alerts tab so
actions per minute selection on the tab plank at the bottom of the drivers allows you to customize the lighting
Behavior based on the number of actions per minutes used in Starcraft 2 sweet so
the more apms you have while you're gaming with this keyboard the more
different your lighting scheme will be so let's have some pretty a pretty close
look at the keyboard itself as far as keyboards go it's a fairly standard
layout it has letters and it has numbers
and it has some uh media keys that are
accessed via a function key hey this is smart okay I'm actually wait hold on is
this the way I prefer it yes I believe this is the way I prefer it I prefer the Windows key over here I know I'm one of
those horrible awful people who doesn't bump the Windows key when they're trying
to game with WD but I prefer the function key over here for these items
because think about it this way if you're going to press function and this
for example to uh mute your volume are
you going to go like this or would this
be more natural oh what a concept right oh you know what we should actually do
here let's plug this thing in so it actually
has two goldplated USB plugs and I'm guessing it is just for extra power so
what I'm going to do is I'm going to plug these into my MSI GX 660r gaming notebook and see what
happens ooh it lights up look at that okay I don't have the drivers installed
so I'm not going to be able to do any additional um testing on the different
lighting configurations but that is what it looks like once it's lit up it's got
a pretty even overall back backlight the one key that I'd say doesn't get as much
love as the others is probably the Escape key but uh looks pretty darn good
even in the bright lights that I have shining down at me right now so not bad
at all I'll turn those lights off and I'll give you guys a better look at it in a moment so let's flip it over and
see what we have to see down here so first we've got a couple of uh lighting
strips at the bottom of the keyboard we have two of those little r risers if you
want to Incline the keyboard that's more comfortable for you we have R pads on
the bottom of the keyboard to keep it from slipping big ones at the front
small ones at the back so even if you are using those tabs it shouldn't slip
around and then okay I'll finally get in close and have a look at what all keys
you guys are going to find here so function keys we've got mute volume up
volume down we've got play stop forward
back and then we have uh-oh H this appears to be
brightness oh on and off okay and
this oh okay is for gaming mode versus
not gaming mode which probably turns off the Windows key um that would be my
guess okay here we have oh this is interesting so we've taken the insert
homepage up delete end and page down and we've put them all in the number pad
which I actually can't decide if it bothers me
or not I'm going to go ahead and say no for now because we can always go into
number mode and then we still have insert home and page up now what I
probably would have done was I probably would have gone like uh
delete home or delete page up and page
down or something to find like sort of three useful keys and and leave them
here even in number pad mode but I mean it's uh it's a bit of a it's never easy
when you're trying to decide how to sort of butcher a keyboard layout to condense
it so you know they chopped it up and they did the best they could here are
the arrow keys if you're not in number mode so yeah I you know it's not bad it
makes it more compact I mean it's a lot shorter than uh than a typical keyboard
I mean here's a standard layout keyboard This is a steel Series 7g so you can see
that it is a good like how much WoW shorter is this it's like a good 2 and
1/2 3 in shorter than a 7g keyboard so here's our lit little
Starcraft 2 thing overall feel of the keys honestly isn't exceptional I mean
I'm not going to lie to you guys it's a it's a gaming keyboard it's not a
mechanical keyboard like their black widow Series so you're not going to get
that great tactile feedback however um I
can't really comment on how well optimized it is for RTS gaming but I can
tell you guys that they feel like very adequate key switches especially
considering the fact they are not mechanical key switches so what I'm
going to do is I'm going to turn off these lights and give you guys a look at
what the keyboard looks like there's my Star Wars
shirt I'm so cool when the lights are
dimmed ooh yeah you can see it's much more
noticeable that the Escape key doesn't get much lighting cuz you can see the
laser etched Keys um allow the back light to show through okay remember
these are not blue colored these are actually just lit up by the blue light
behind them seeing all of the etchings on the keys so it looks pretty sweet in
the dark guys don't forget to subscribe
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thank you for watching my unboxing of the Starcraft 2 razor Marauder keyboard